Cinema and Society

Film and Social Change in Pakistan

Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

This book presents a rich collection of critical essays, ethnographic writings, memoirs, and reflections

Cinema and Society

Film and Social Change in Pakistan

Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

Description

The book presents a rich collection of critical essays, ethnographic writings, memoirs, and reflections, portraying a well-rounded picture of cinema culture and historical change in Pakistan. The multiplicity of voices and approaches enhances the appeal of this collection, which is the first ever to delineate the diversity in the cinematic and extra-cinematic traditions of Pakistan, as well as in the histories of production, exhibition, and reception. The work also highlights aesthetic and affective politics in relation to nationalism; Islamization in policy and practice; the biopolitics of morality, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality; and the phenomenology of film exhibition and urban formation. The book incorporates rarely seen nostalgia items, such as pictures of studio shootings, as well as of film actors, film scenes, posters, and lobby cards.

Cinema and Society

Film and Social Change in Pakistan

Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

Author Information

Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

Ali Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Department Chair at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. His research interests vary from labour issues, particularly child and bonded labour to popular culture in Pakistan, focusing particularly on cinema and sports. He has previously worked in Washington and in Islamabad for the World Bank's South Asia Region and with the International Labour Organization primarily on projects related to child and bonded labour. Ali Khan's book Representing Children: Power, Policy and the Discourse on Child Labour in the Football Manufacturing Industry of Pakistan was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. He is also the General Editor for a series of books on Sociology and Anthropology in Pakistan.

Ali Nobil Ahmad is a Researcher at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, and Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), where he teaches and designs courses in Modern History, Historiography, and World History. He was formerly a full-time Research Officer on the Leverhulme Project on Migration and Citizenship, undertaken by the Department of Geography at the University College, London, where he worked full-time on a global study on human smuggling and trafficking. He is also on the editorial board of an art and cultural studies journal titled, Third Text, and regularly contributes to various academic journals.

Cinema and Society

Film and Social Change in Pakistan

Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

Reviews and Awards

"Cinema and Society demonstrates the capacity of Pakistani film to do a great deal more than reinforce statist or religious agendas throughout the nearly seventy-year duration of the fractious nation's history, even as it struggles under their influence." - Madeline Clement, Times Literary Supplement